On a clear day, the Andes mountains form a dramatic backdrop to Santiago. Those clear days are increasingly common as air quality improves and city residents can pause to admire the view with less stress about their trips around Chile’s capital now that parts of the city have made walking, biking, and transit a priority. “Parts” because Santiago is fragmented into 32 distinct comunas, each with its own mayor. The comuna of Santiago, which covers the city’s historic core, main government buildings, and several bustling neighborhoods, has led the city’s overall efforts to improve mobility options dramatically over the last several years. Under the leadership of Mayor Carolina Tohá (2012-2016), those efforts became tangible with new bike lanes built, crosswalks painted, priority transit lanes established, bikeshare debuted, and public spaces revitalized. Santiago won the ITDP Sustainable Transport Award in 2016 and hosted MOBILIZE in 2017.

ITDP: The theme of this year’s MOBILIZE is “making space for mobility in booming cities”. What is your city doing to address mobility in the face of rapid urbanization and what are the challenges in accelerating these solutions?

Carolina Tohá: Santiago, and all major Latin American cities, underwent a process of urbanization and rapid growth several decades ago. As a result, we have always been responding to the emergencies created by new populations arriving in the cities without any planning and without sufficient resources to provide them fair access to the city.

Now that Latin America is mostly urbanized – this is the most urbanized continent on the planet – we are realizing that many mistakes were made during this growth process of our cities. The main defects are the great inequality and urban segregation, causing the lives of those people with fewer resources to be more difficult and more expensive and hampering their access to the benefits offered by the city.

If we were to experience this urbanization process again, everybody in Latin America would agree that two major priorities are to avoid segregation and to have high-quality public transport systems. We did not do this when our cities were growing, but I think that today this is the trend being imposed in Latin America: to overcome segregation and strongly strengthen public transport.

ITDP: What impact would you like to have in your role in the coming years to address the issue of mobility and rapid urbanization?

CT: In Chile, the great challenge is to understand that mobility is a fundamental backbone of the kind of development we have. We cannot simply leave it to technical decisions made by experts. Rather, it should be part of our democratic debate. We must understand that whatever we do concerning mobility will strongly impact the kind of development and the kind of society we are going to have.

My main objectives are to put mobility at the heart of public debate; to remove it from the offices of the experts and turn it into a priority for people, a priority for the future to come, for the country as a whole and for the city. I believe that the entire world is quite backward in this regard. These issues are still being discussed by very small groups and they don’t manage to become the subject to active demands by citizens.

ITDP: What projects, anywhere in the world, are most interesting to you right now?

Bernardo Baranda, ITDP Regional Director of Latin America, at the press conference to announce the introduction of the National Road Safety Act in Mexico City.

These are the most important projects because the only way to respond to such varied needs and complex challenges as we have is for people to get used to combining different modes of transport. None of them by themselves will solve all the problems.

In particular, the mode that has been the object of desire for the entire last century, the private car, is not sustainable as the main mode of transport in the city. It can only play a role in a scheme in which people combine it with public transport, walking, and cycling. Everything we do to legitimize different ways of providing everybody with good infrastructure and safety conditions will help us get out of this car desire paradigm and lead us to a mode continuation paradigm.

I always like to talk about Latin America because I think that there is no need to believe, once again, that this can only be done in the right way in cities or countries that are very rich. In Mexico City, they managed to establish a city constitution where the active modes and the idea of public transport and sustainable transport became an explicitly declared goal of that tremendous metropolis.

What is being done by several cities in Colombia is also very important. There they have taken into account the issues of equity in the promotion of transport, considering the perspective of women, those people with less resources, and thus they have taken a view of transport that is not only related to moving around but also to social justice, which is something very important in Latin America.

ITDP: What are you most excited about seeing or learning at MOBILIZE?

Carolina at MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam

CT: For us, as Latin Americans, the most attractive feature of MOBILIZE is the creation of dialogue and cooperation between Africa and Latin America. I believe that our experiences may serve each other well. Both our continents have social inequality problems that should be the priority in everything we do, and I believe that along this path, urban policy and mobility should take the lead. Normally, when we think about social equity we always think about education, health, employment, and I believe that it is essential to include urban mobility in the agenda.

Even with very strong urbanization the African countries are experiencing today, they still have low levels of urbanization; here in Latin America we already have very high levels of urbanization. This allows us to exchange much of our experience to try to help those cities that are growing so fast, like Dar es Salaam, to grow well. They do not have to go the long way we have taken in other cities to finish discovering that segregation must be avoided, public transport must be prioritized, and the private car should not be the primary mode of transport. It took us a long time to learn that, but the African countries can learn it as of now and have beautiful cities with a sustainable, comprehensive, harmonious outlook right from the start, without repeating our mistakes.

ITDP: Last year’s MOBILIZE, in Santiago, showcased the great work that your administration did. Do you have any advice or lessons for Dar es Salaam in this respect?

CT: Firstly, changes in understanding mobility are essentially cultural changes. They have to do with people’s habits, with how people see themselves as part of a collective, a community, a city. And therefore, to be successful, it is necessary to act in parallel on public policies, on infrastructure, on the way in which contracts are concluded and laws are passed, and on the cultural sphere.

These two things cannot be separated; they have to be done simultaneously. And in the cultural sphere, it is necessary to have alliances; things cannot be done by a decree from a municipal office, or from a ministry, or from parliament. This is done by creating alliances with civil society, working with the media, generating a shared awareness that change is necessary and that we have to be the protagonists of that change, not simply expect the authorities to do so.

Secondly, in all parts of the world, and particularly in developing countries, the local level is the weakest link in public chain decisions. In order to make changes that are sustainable over time, alliances must be made with other levels of government. We, the municipalities, are not able to do it by ourselves. I believe that we are the drivers of this transformation but we need to add allies from the other levels of government, because it is very difficult to undertake these changes based on the municipal will alone, especially in our developing world.

ITDP: Santiago, like many cities, has an air quality problem. How did the interventions you oversaw during your tenure address this?

CT: Several of the actions were focused precisely on the environmental issue because our program was part of a United Nations TK, a green area to limit greenhouse gas emissions. And what was done for this? First, Santiago promoted a series of pilot experiences to incorporate electric mobility in Chile. Pilot plans were developed for public transport, cars, taxis, and free tricycle taxis for short distance trips. Afterwards, these programs have been introduced in a more massive way.

Plaza de Armas, Santiago, Chile.

Currently, a new call for tenders for public transport throughout the city is being prepared. It will incorporate a percentage of electric buses that is still being discussed and this was largely motivated by the discussion we created with these policies in Santiago. The same with taxis: an extension of this small pilot plan that started in our Santiago program is now going to be implemented.

Second, there was a strong emphasis on active modes in Santiago’s sustainable mobility plan. One-third of Santiaguinos walk and we are convinced that if we keep them walking as their main mode without switching over to motorized modes, this will be a life insurance policy for our city for the future. We designed a very strong plan, starting with educating children, infrastructure, priority road space, and safety measures for cyclists and pedestrians, all of which has had a quite positive impact on other municipalities and the central government.

For example, the standard that we created for bike lanes later became a national standard adopted by the Ministry of Housing for the whole country. The downtown plan, reserving central roads for public transport; today there are many urban centers in different cities evaluating the implementation of similar plans. All these combined measures have positive effects on emissions and the pollution problems our city has.

ITDP: Tell me about Instituto Ciudad and what you are hoping to achieve?

CT: The institute is a collaboration of different professionals from across the political spectrum who have an interest in urban issues. It is a plural space where people come together from very different disciplinary backgrounds: economists, transport engineers, urban planners, historians, sociologists, safety specialists, communications experts, political scientists. All of them strive for that interdisciplinary approach that will help us to better understand what is happening in the city and to propose more comprehensive solutions.

We want this institution to be a great driver for debate about the city, which should be part of our democratic agenda so that people become aware and empower themselves to demand from public policies that the city be treated as it should be, as a priority. We still have a long way to go in Chile, but we want to raise awareness based on experiences we have learned about all over the world.

This interview is the part of the MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam Speaker Series. In this series, we will feature interviews with speakers and researchers from VREF’s Future Urban Transport where they will discuss their work in sustainable transport and reflect on MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam’s theme: Making Space for Mobility in Booming Cities.

Fortaleza will host the 2019 MOBILIZE SummitBucheon City, South Korea will receive an Honorable Mention

Fortaleza, Brazil a coastal city of 2.6 million in the state of Ceara, is the 5th largest city in the nation, and growing rapidly. As with many cities around the world, Fortaleza has struggled to meet their growing need for urban mobility without sacrificing the environment and quality of life for their residents. Fortunately, the city’s actions over the past couple of years have shown that they are facing this challenge head-on.

The city has been implementing good practices on their streets since 2014, including complete streets, or equitable division of road space; reducing CO2, and increasing road safety by prioritizing public transport, cycling, and walking. In 2018, Fortaleza reached a goal of 108 km of dedicated bus lanes, which include refurbished bus terminals and a fare-integrated transport system. In addition, they have delivered a whopping 225 km of cycling infrastructure, and integrated bike share systems with public transport. Road safety elements implemented include a reduced speed limit, narrowing roads for cars, raised pedestrian crossings, and redesigns of intersections. As a result, deaths from traffic collisions were reduced from 14.66 (per 100,000) in 2014, to 9.71 in 2017.

“Fortaleza has taken the right approach to transport, which is one that moves away from private cars, to one that prioritizes and integrates pedestrians, cyclist, and public transport users,” says Michael Kodransky, Chair of the Sustainable Transport Award Committee and Head of MOBILIZE, “There is a growing realization among cities that the individual transport model is unsustainable, and we’re very happy to showcase Fortaleza’s leadership over the next year. We very much look forward to bringing 200+ sustainable transport experts to see the city’s achievements for themselves at next year’s MOBILIZE.”

The STA committee was particularly impressed with the replicability of Fortaleza’s projects, as many are based on low cost interventions, partnerships with the private sector, and pilot projects that gather data to justify further capital projects. Fortaleza, has already been working with different cities to share the good practices on sustainable transport and road safety, from a developing city perspective.

“Despite the challenges faced as a developing country city, Fortaleza has demonstrated that through creativity, innovation, leadership and public participation, it is possible to achieve successful results in promoting sustainable mobility in a short term. One of our main strategies has been to adapt international good practices to our local context and we believe that MOBILIZE 2019 will be an important opportunity to maximize the exchange of experiences. We feel honored in receiving this price and to host such prestigious event in our city.” says the mayor of Fortaleza, Roberto Claudio Rodrigues Bezerra.

Walkway in Citizen’s River, Bucheon City.

Bucheon City, South Korea will receive the honorable mention for their creation of an extensive new network of cycling and walking paths, including transforming areas around three metro stations into community and cultural public spaces.

Both cities will be honored at an award ceremony in Washington, DC in January 2019 during the Transport Research Board annual meeting. Fortaleza will be the site of MOBILIZE 2019, ITDP’s annual Sustainable Transport Summit organized in partnership with the Volvo Research and Education Foundations. The event will showcase best practices and lessons in sustainable mobility to an international group of city practitioners and researchers, spotlighting this emerging city as a learning lab. For more information, visit mobilizesummit.org.

by Onésimo Flores Dewey and Santiago Fernández Reyes

The Mexican City of Guadalajara has built subway lines before, but the line currently under construction is significantly different. This time, the city has a strategy to leverage investments in transit to repopulate the city’s core and promote multimodality. The new subway runs underground Avenida Alcalde, a historic but deteriorated 6 lane avenue used by more than 100,000 car commuters everyday. With the avenue closed due to construction of the subway, this car traffic largely evaporated. People started using alternative routes, or changed their transportation habits. Mayor Enrique Alfaro decided to make this change permanent. His administration is transforming the three kilometer section of Avenida Alcalde into a lovely, traffic calmed area, full of fountains, sculptures and world class urban design. In addition, the city has approved a new land use plan, which largely frees property owners to build thousands of new housing units alongside the subway stations of Avenida Alcalde. Guadalajara may become the most interesting experiment in TOD in Latin America.

Line 3 of Guadalajara’s Metro system will be a major upgrade to the city’s mass transit infrastructure. (Photo: Héctor Ríos)

But will the real estate market react positively to this opportunity? Will new development blend in or disrupt the existing neighborhoods character? Will changes in urban design truly entice people to ditch their cars? MIT’s instructors Brent Ryan, Onésimo Flores Dewey, and Chris Zegras with a group of students from various backgrounds including civil engineering, architecture, urban design, and business administration, worked through a semester-long course to identify strategies to create sustainable mixed-use communities around mass transit stations in Guadalajara.

The team traveled to Guadalajara during August 2017, where they carried out site visits and met with government officials, real estate developers, community activists and neighbors. They reviewed existing plans, and evaluated the potential for the new transit investments in the area. The group used ITDP’s TOD Standard to evaluate station-areas and to propose changes that could influence more sustainable and socially equitable urban development outcomes.

ITDP and the MIT Team carried out a workshop to evaluate station areas. (Photo: ITDP Mexico)

One of the strategies identified was to capitalize the potential for TOD along Guadalajara’s upcoming Line 3 of the light rail, which is expected to be inaugurated in 2018. Two station areas were closely examined, Santuario and La Normal, which are located in the historic center of the city. The new light rail line will improve transit accessibility to this area of the city greatly, and is a good opportunity to make these neighborhoods efficient, economically vibrant, and livable. (MIT DUSP, 2016)

Location and proximity between Santuario and LaNormal along the new Line 3 metro corridor. (MIT-DUSP, 2017)

The final report presented to the city officials:“TOD in Guadalajara: An Approach to Urban Transformation” details plans to turn Santuario and La Normal neighborhoods into mixed-use zones. Policies to support this vision, include updating zoning plans to facilitate denser mixed-use development, policies to manage travel demand, strategies for land acquisition and assembly, encouraging participation, and upgrading the streetscape and public spaces to encourage walking and cycling.

The two stations correspond to different typologies, and therefore should be planned according to different strategies. La Normal is characterized by opportunity for greater densification due to high number of publicly owned large parcels. These parcels have a potential to accommodate more units of affordable housing. Santuario, on the other hand has a potential for infill as it is an already dense neighborhood. Once improved through pedestrian and mixed use interventions, it could serve as a gateway for the new historic center where the city is already remarkably walkable, mixed and with high quality public spaces. Importantly, because Santuario is characterized by a more built-out urban fabric, specific no-displacement measures are recommended to protect pre-existing tenants such as proper compensation for both formal and informal business owners. Both station areas, while distinct, could be models for TOD that fit Guadalajara’s particular context.

Proposed streetscaping for Alcalde Corridor that could be incorporated into the Santuario neighborhood to improve its activity. (City of Guadalajara)

It is rare to find transportation investments and land use planning truly linked in Latin America. More often than not, cities build gated high-rise districts with no transit access, or transit lines where few people live. However, the collaboration between different stakeholders, including academia, government authorities and civil society, could be powerful to advance more sustainable development policies. Time will tell, but Guadalajara seems on track to getting TOD right.

Download The TOD Standard here and visit todstandard.org for more information. You can also read more insights from other authors of The TOD Standard here, here, and here.

ITDP, together with an international committee of development and transport experts, invites you to nominate your city for the Annual Sustainable Transport Award.

Nominations are now open and will be accepted online at staward.org until April 13, 2018.

Since 2005, the Sustainable Transport Award has recognized profound leadership and vision in sustainable transportation and urban livability. These strategies should improve mobility for all residents, reduce transportation greenhouse and air pollution emissions, and enhance safety and access for bicyclists and pedestrians. Nominations are accepted from any interested parties, including government, civil society organizations, and academic institutions. Nominations must include verifiable project data and contact information for the city.

Cities of all sizes from all over the world have been recognized by the committee for best practices in sustainable transport. Past winners include:

2017 STA winner, Santiago, Chile

Santiago, Chile

Yichang, China

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Mexico City, México

Medellín, Colombia

San Francisco, United States

Ahmedabad, India

Seoul, South Korea

Bogotá, Colombia

A complete list of winning cities with details on their win is available at staward.org.

The 2018 winner, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is the first African City to win the STA, for launching a series of transformative improvements that bring a high quality rapid transit system to its streets combined with walking and cycling infrastructure improvements. The changes are anchored around the Dar es Salaam Bus Rapid Transit system, or DART, a high quality-high capacity system incorporating best practice design and features, the first true BRT system in East Africa. DART has reduced commute times by more than half for residents, who previously faced upwards of four hours stuck in traffic every day. In addition, the city has built cycle lanes and improved intersections and sidewalks along the corridor.

Dar es Salaam BRT system

In June 2018, Dar es Salaam will host the MOBILIZE Summit, held each year in the winning city. MOBILIZE brings together 200 international urban transport and development planners, practitioners, and officials, world-class researchers, and NGO representatives to share strategies, challenges, research and study the example of Dar es Salaam as an international best practice in sustainable transport. The winner of the 2019 STA is where the summit goes next year.

“The Sustainable Transport Award is about celebrating bold vision and momentous changes that improve quality of life for people in cities. In the nearly 15 year history of the award, the nominees have often included cities doing great work under the radar,” says Michael Kodransky, chair of the STA Committee, “There are so many inspiring changes happening on the ground in cities that aren’t known as having the usual transport best practices. The STA and MOBILIZE are great vehicles for recognizing political courage and showcasing the latest achievements. It’s also a great opportunity for those of us working in sustainable transport to learn from innovative approaches, which are shared with a global cohort of the leading influencers at MOBILIZE”.

The 2019 winner will be announced at MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam on June 28, 2018. The winner and honorable mentions will be recognized at a ceremony and reception in Washington, DC during the Transport Research Board conference the following January.

Recently, C40 opened a call for proposals for the Women4Climate program. In Mexico City, the Women’s Climate Tutoring program was developed in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment of Mexico City. The objective of the program is to empower and inspire the next generation of climate leaders through a global mentoring program dedicated to women in the cities that make up the C40 network. The 2020 goal is to have accompanied 500 women in the development of their projects at a global level.

C40 is a network that encompasses more than 90 cities that represent more than 650 million people and 25 percent of the global economy. The CDMX represents the Latin American region in the Executive Committee of this body.

Marianely Patlán, Cyclocities Strategy Leader at ITDP, and member of the Transportation-Oriented Development (TOD) program at ITDP Mexico as well as at the international initiative La Ciudad Verde, presented the winning proposal, The missing link between motorized individuals and a multimodal society: Risk analysis environmental and mobility experiences in Mexico City. It was one of the ten winners among 76 projects presented.

For the development process of the project, a team will be formed by Valentina Delgado, an expert in climate policy, and Clara Vadillo, ITDP road safety strategy leader, accompanied by Adriana Lobo, WRI Mexico Director.

The project analyzes the travel experiences of the inhabitants of Mexico City, make a measurement of the personal exposure to environmental pollutants in different modes of transport, and determine which factors promote this the modal choice. A fundamental part of the project is to be able to show the difference in the exercise of the right to urban mobility between men and women. This project can be the basis for the generation of sustainable urban mobility policies, with a gender perspective, that can encourage a modal shift towards sustainable urban mobility alternatives.

ITDP welcomes the leadership of Marianely Patlán in this project, and we celebrate the inclusion of the gender perspective and a generation of alliances to renew sustainable urban mobility policies and move towards inclusive and prosperous cities.

According to the World Health Organization, global road deaths equaled 1.25 million in 2015 – more than the number of people killed annually in homicides.

Road safety advocates are striving to cut the number of deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes in half by 2020. To reach that ambitious target, ITDP has been working in Brazil, China, and Mexico using the latest ideas to place people ahead of cars and make roads safer for everyone.

The modern road-safety movement began with Ralph Nader’s 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, which called out car manufacturers for failing to include seat belts and other safety features in vehicles. Next came the drunk-driving campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s, led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Personal stories of losing children transformed the conversation around road safety, and the organization became one of the most effective and recognizable advocacy charities in the United States. A new revolution is happening around road safety as streets are redesigned and re-engineered to place people—not cars—at the core of their use.

Three exciting ITDP projects are spearheading the efforts of this revolution: supporting Vision Zero in Mexico City, taking a child-friendly approach to design in Changsha, China, and changing the way citizens interact with their streets in São Paulo, Brazil.

In 2015, Mexico City became the first city in a low or middle-income country to adopt Vision Zero. This approach to road safety proposes that collisions are not “accidents” but preventable incidents that can be avoided by systemic action.

Sweden launched the concept in the 1990s and watched its traffic deaths drop from 7 per 100,000 to less than 3 per 100,000 in 2014. The approach has been successfully adopted in cities throughout Western Europe too, and more recently in North America.

Despite this initial success, Vision Zero in Mexico City is at a critical juncture. ITDP is working with the FIA Foundation to address data gaps, vulnerable areas such as school zones, and most importantly, the upcoming mayoral elections. As Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera turns his focus to the national stage in 2018, Mexico City will be left without its original Vision Zero champion. ITDP will address this gap directly and work during the campaign to put people-centered street design—and the lives saved through Vision Zero policies—on candidates’ agendas.

Praça Getúlio Vargas Filho in São Paulo, Brazil, as it currently is…

…and a rendering of how the street will be improved, adding pedestrian space, cycle lanes, and crosswalks.

ITDP is taking a different approach to road safety in Changsha, a city in central China. A startling statistic – according to China’s Department of Transportation Statistics, more than 18,500 children under 14 years old die in traffic every year – led ITDP to work with the City of Changsha to adopt road-safety measures under the Child-Friendly City initiative. These include street design improvements in school zones and road-safety measures incorporated into the city’s long-term development plan for 2050. So far the city has implemented recommended designs in pilot schools, such as improving the walking space around the school and creating waiting areas for parents picking up their kids. The city has committed funding to make additional improvements to sidewalks, intersections, traffic management, and public spaces around schools throughout the city that will put children firmly at the center of street design strategies.

Finally, in early 2017, ITDP’s efforts to promote Zone 40s, or areas of reduced speed and people-centered street design, in São Paulo looked like it had hit a wall. Mayor João Doria took office in January 2017 after explicitly running—and winning on a campaign aimed at increasing speed limits on key expressways with a slogan of “Speed up São Paulo”. One of the administration’s first actions reinstated faster speeds on the expressways in São Paulo and changed the data source for road safety. The situation looked bleak. However, ITDP and a consortium of partners, including the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety, the World Resource Institute, the National Association of City Transportation Officials, and the Global Designing Cities Initiative, didn’t give up. Through strategic engagement and education on the benefits of street redesigns for Zone 40s in the neighborhoods of São Miguel Paulista and Santana, the City embraced the people-centered street redesigns, and has made a commitment to scale up of the efforts throughout the city. This is good news for the citizens of São Paulo as early tests of street redesigns show dramatic improvements to the comfort and enjoyment of pedestrians using the temporarily redesigned streets.

These exciting examples from around the world are just a few of the ways that ITDP is helping cities rethink the way they design their urban environment. As 2018 unfolds, ITDP will move forward with these projects and many more through our field offices. After nearly a century of building for cars, it’s time for cities to put people first.

This blog post is modified from an article in the 29th issue of the Sustainable Transport magazine. You can find the article and others here.

Recent pedestrian improvements in Chennai, India, enable accessibility to people of all ages and physical conditions. Photo Credit: Santhosh Loganaathan

by Luc Nadal & Iwona Alfred

Population growth and urbanization worldwide is on course to bring two billion additional residents to cities within the next three decades. Creating the buildings, neighborhoods and cities that will house them is a task of a magnitude unprecedented in human history. However, these numbers, as daunting as they are, are only the beginning of the challenge.

The urban world of endless roads, and fragmented, car-dependent urban sprawl that has spread over the planet in the last century has already shown very clear limits to its sustainability: social segregation and isolation exacerbated by driveable distances, urban land severed and blighted by auto-oriented infrastructure, the health of many degraded by toxic air and sedentary lifestyles, injustice in the distribution of harmful externalities, not to mention its prominent role in the degradation of natural systems, the compromising of climates and the undermining of the safety and livelihoods of multitudes.

Inclusive transit-oriented development (TOD) is a framework for urban development that is the foundation for a different future — one where people, activities, buildings, and public space are designed to work together; where neighborhoods, people, and opportunities are connected by walking, cycling, and efficient transit at no or low financial and environmental cost, and with the highest resilience possible to disruptive events.

Pedestrian realm must be accessible to “pedestrians” using all forms of walk aids like here in Guadalajara, Mexico. Photo Credit: Héctor Ríos

Building TOD cities, around the world, and to scale, is an urgent matter. It is not a simple proposition, however. It involves profound, complex shifts on the part of multiple, interdependent actors and elements that must be aligned and brought together. The way infrastructure, streets, and buildings are planned, coordinated and designed must change. Building and land use codes, regulations, and laws must be reformed. Financing channels and incentives must be rethought and regulated. Countless participants, with often diverging world views and interests, must cooperate. The shift to TOD must begin with the building of a common understanding of the essential characteristics that must be achieved for cities and neighborhoods to perform as desired.

The TOD Standard offers a simple framework of core principles, basic standards of performance, and concrete metrics for rapid assessment of projects, plans, statements of purpose, policies, and regulations. The Standard is performance-based and does not promote particular building types or designs except for features that have a direct link to facilitating inclusivity, walking, cycling, and transit access, such as active frontage designed to animate the public realm. The Standard is freely available to all, and can be shared and used by all parties, from decision and policy makers, to technical staff and professionals, to private sector developers and investors, to civic and grassroots organizations, and to the diverse people that will be part of, or affected by, urban change. It can serve as a basis on which to discuss the details of effecting and shaping change.

Since its first launch in 2013, The TOD Standard has begun changing the world of cities in direct and noticeable ways. In India, for example, the State of Jharkhand embed the Standard’s framework in its new and far-reaching JTODP 2016-2026 urban policythat sets clear goals, roles and responsibilities for government institutions at all levels. This will ensure that Jharkhand’s cities use sustainable and equitable, walkable, cycle friendly and transit accessible development methods as they double their capacity in preparation for the influx of circa 35 million people projected within just 15 years.

In Mexico City, a campaign to promote TOD Standard’s principles and objectives has helped catalyze the will of local civil society, real estate business circles, and government to cooperate in shifting away from the old, failed vision of car-centric urban development. In a recent groundbreaking move, the City abolished the mandatory car parking that builders had to provide. Parking requirement effectively cross-subsidized driving at the expenses of the other activities and mobility modes that equal investment would make possible. Mexico City is also busy redesigning its many streets and intersections, reclaiming road space from cars to provide safer and more inviting space for walking, cycling, and the running of efficient transit.

From India to Mexico, and through many others places, the TOD Standard is used as a guide and an instrument for action, for policy, and for measuring and monitoring development. Most importantly, it often serves as a reference and a basis in the process of clarifying and prioritizing objectives, and of constructing a common vision for change amongst the participants. It thus helps gather the resolve, the forces, and the unity of purpose needed to build the healthy, inclusive, people-centered, functional, and desirable living environments that their cities, and humanity at large, most urgently need.

Hello!

Want to learn more about how the new TOD Standard incorporates inclusivity? Register for our upcoming webinar on December 7th!

Oliver O’Brien is anurbanist and researcher in quantitative geography, at University College London. His specialties include spatial analytics of bikeshare systems across the world, and visualizing socio-economic data such as population demographics.

Introduction

Many major cities around the world are seeing rapid population growth, resulting in increased strain on existing road and public transportation network infrastructure as the numbers on the daily commute swell. Smart mobility – putting data, information, and options in the hands of the travelling public – has been beneficial to many of these cities, allowing better use of fixed resources and more efficient movement around the urban space. Opening up live and static datasets for public consumption can be inexpensive and straightforward relative to the cost of building new physical infrastructure, particularly where sensor information can be easily accessed through existing control systems and carefully specified new “smart city” infrastructure.

London’s Open Data Portal for Transport

Being based in London, I am fortunate to be a data researcher in a city proactively releasing huge amounts of open data. Transport for London (TfL) is the city administration’s transport manager for many modes (e.g. buses, bikeshare, trams, light rail), operator for some (e.g. metro, cable car, major roads) and regulator for others (e.g. taxis, private hire). It has worked with its divisions and private operators to release large amounts of data, both dynamic (updating live, e.g. metro departure boards and traffic cameras) and static (e.g. infrastructure locations, roadworks and safe taxi lists), as open data, for consumption and augmentation by anyone, including commercial concerns who can create potential business with such data.

The data is available through an Open Data Portal section on its website. Live running and timetable information allows multi-modal journey planners (see below) to be easily created and quickly react to disruption and show alternatives. Visualizations of such data can inform both transport planners and the general public as to the use and operation of transport modes, in the long term and short term respectively. Fine-grained temporal capacity information can be used to encourage changes in travel habits. As both a user of TfL’s transit systems, and a visualizer of its data, I have seen first-hand the benefits of the easy access and utilisation of these datasets. I developed TubeHeartbeat, for example, which uses an open dataset from TfL’s portal, on passenger volumes by quarter-hour, to visualize the short but intense commute periods on London’s “Underground” metro network. I also curated an exhibition “Big Data Here”, which projected live running bus information and traffic camera videos, amongst other hyperlocal open data, onto a screen positioned right by the corresponding bus stop and camera itself.

The presence of a reliable, comprehensive, documented, and insightful set of data feeds has resulted in an ecosystem of third-party “apps” being developed for the dominant smartphone platforms (Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android). For example, there are many apps for London’s bikeshare system, most showing a map of availability of bikes or free docking station slots, often augmented with information on nearby cycling infrastructure, a timer/meter indicating the cost of the current hire, etc. Many of the apps adopt a free-at-point-of-use, ad-funded business model, while the more advanced ones cost a small amount to purchase.

A key driver of the success of such eco-systems is the adoption of a stance by the data provider (e.g. the transit authority) that, while there is a value to the data that they release on a free and open basis, the third-party commercial marketplace is better positioned to realize this value, through innovation and different thinking, allowing the transit authority to focus on their core role of running and managing the transport. Additionally, as open data is typically supplied without a service contract, the provision of such data does not place additional support obligations on the operator. A specification on availability of the data, and documentation on its use, is however helpful for rapid commercial adoption. Ultimately, this commercial activity benefits the operator by making mobility smarter, the people using the transit systems, and the economy in general. The best innovations can then typically be incorporated into the operator’s own apps or other information systems. In London’s case, and my anecdotal experience, the app developer community and the final users can be quite vocal where there are data errors or availability outages from the upstream providers.

Development of Standard Open Data Formats and Specifications

There are a number of emerging open data file/syntax formats and data specifications, for smart mobility. In terms of physical file formats, JSON is widely used, with XML also often available. Static open data is often supplied in the CSV or KML file formats, although more sophisticated open data portals combine this with the dynamic data format. For example, TfL’s “Unified” API aims to provide almost all its open data output, dynamic and static, in a consistent JSON form.

GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) was developed by Google as a standard format for transit timetabling information. Once developed, Google released the specification as an open standard, and encouraged public transport authorities to adopt it, so that their timetable information can be incorporated into the global, multi-modal journey planners, such as Google’s own Google Maps. The designation of the format as open doubtless reassures public authorities concerned with adopting a standard for the benefit of a single corporation. Where large public transport authorities already have established formats, such as the Department for Transport’s TransXChange specification in the U.K., third party companies have worked with either side to provide translation between the formats.

Echoing GTFS, the North American Bike Share Association, a consortium of suppliers and operators of bikeshare systems in the US and Canada, has recently developed and published GBFS (General Bikeshare Feed Specification), which aims to show bike and empty docking space information on a standardized and real-time basis, with a view to its future inclusion in multi-modal journey planners in a similar way to GTFS. GBFS is relatively new but has also started to be adopted and published by some bikeshare operators beyond North America. I am hopeful that this standard will be further adopted in the UK and by other providers, likely to happen quickly should Google Maps or another major journey planner incorporate the US data.

Multi-City Users of Open Data for Smarter Mobility

Adopting the above data standards allows multi-city websites and apps to be created and, just as importantly, maintained, with relative ease, with the upstream data provider being responsible for making changes while maintaining consistency through their API. CityMapper and Google Maps are two large users of open data transit feeds. Both offer multi-modal transport planning across a large number of cities across the world.

It is likely that, as tourists and business visitors explore new cities, they are increasingly using the apps already installed on their smartphones, to move around unfamiliar urban environments in an efficient way. A reduction in out-of-country smartphone network data costs, such as is happening across European Union member states, is likely to drive such habits, and be an additional factor in multi-city apps becoming a key component in enabling smart mobility. Certainly, this has been the case for me, I have typically used both CityMapper and Google Maps for recent work trips and holidays in both America and Europe, rather than needing to fill my smartphone screen with apps designed for just one city.

Integrating Transport with Fare Smartcards

One way to encourage “smart” mobility, where different or multiple modes of transport are used as and when different situations require, as suggested by online journey planners, is the adoption of multi-modal, multi-agency fare smartcards. TfL’s fare smartcard is called Oyster Card, and can be used for almost all forms of public transport in London (including on trains not otherwise controlled by TfL) with some notable exceptions, such as the bikeshare system, which was installed on a drop-in basis rather than being engineered to integrate with Oyster, partly due to cost but also due to the need for a sizeable deposit to be secured when hiring an expensive bikeshare bike. Since the introduction of Oyster Card, TfL has continued to innovate with fare smartcards, now allowing regular “contactless” credit and debit cards to be used. This reduces costs for TfL by passing payment processing administration to a range of card providers that compete which each other and so ensure competitive processing costs that equate to less than the overall cost of administering Oyster Card and its associated provider. In the UK, unfortunately, for commercial and logistical reasons, the emerging smartcard standard outside of London is a different system to Oyster Card. However its take-up has been much slower due to less financial incentives for the user. Ultimately, my prediction is that credit/debit cards will supersede both fare smartcards and season tickets, even for season ticket holders, who would instead receive various types period caps across their long-term use.

In Mexico City, the transport mix is diverse, with private minibuses accounting for a sizeable share of the public transport trips within the city and surrounding area. These services are only lightly regulated and do not offer timetabling, running information or route maps. The city’s transport authority has moved to create a more integrated public transport option by augmenting its very popular but overcrowded metro system with high capacity bus rapid transit (BRT) routes, regular buses, and bikeshare (ECOBICI). The BRT, metro, and city buses use a unified payment system, and are extremely well used, becoming intensely busy during commute periods, both above and below ground. There is obvious scope to increase this as more publicly specified transit becomes available in Mexico City in the future (ITDP, 2017). Mexico has a similar state/city incompatibility with smart cards to the UK that likewise could be mitigated with an adoption of “contactless” credit/debit card use.

Visualizing Taxis and Other Transport in New York City

Private taxi journeys continue to be a key part of a city’s successful smart transit mix, as some journeys require the specific capabilities and locations of private vehicles. The taxi and private hire industry has also innovated, alongside its public transport counterparts. For example, the release of open data for hundreds of millions of cab journeys in New York City has resulted in impressive and dramatic visualizations. Taxi journeys on their own have been mapped, but also combined with public transit vehicle movements across many different modes, to indicate efficiently the spatio-temporal nature of movement around Manhattan and other areas in this large, high-density city.

One of the most successful cab companies, Uber, has been key in the increasing use of maps to help people understand their urban space, by providing a route map of each journey taken by an Uber customer, as part of their resulting receipt. I have personally found that such personalized maps help me understand the geographic layout of places I’ve traveled through on Uber (and other similar cab services), potentially also revealing alternative mobility choices.

Mapping Bike Share

Adoption of standards such as GBFS (above), as well as some of the largest bikeshare operating companies running systems across a large number of cities, has meant that creating a map of live bikeshare information, for hundreds of cities worldwide, has been relatively straightforward. I created the Bike Share Map (O’Brien, 2010) to have an at-a-glance map which immediately tells me what I need to know about the state of my local system. I found it easy to expand the map to additional cities thanks to the adoption of such standards mentioned above. At the time of writing, I have therefore been able to add nearly 200 cities to the map – within each city, a complete map of docking stations, with their empty/full status is shown. Replaying the map for the current and previous day shows flows of bikes, be it the multidirectional flow typically present in cities with a high proportion of tourists, or “tidal” flow seen by commuter-dominated system.

A number of city administrations also release, with the arrangement of their corresponding operators, journey information, indicating typically the start and end docking station name/location and time, for each individual journey. Analysis of such information can reveal additional patterns and characteristics of the usage of bike share, and potentially cycling in general, within each system’s area. For example, my map of best-guess routed flows, based on the release of tens of millions of individual bikeshare journeys on Mexico City’s ECOBICI, reveals the concentration of flows down the city’s major city centre artery, Paseo de la Reforma (O’Brien, 2016), indicating the good use of the dedicated bikeshare lanes that were installed there, certainly born out by personal observation. It also highlights other cycle-heavy areas of the center of the city, suggesting possible areas for potential future cycle infrastructure improvements.

Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated some of the benefits of releasing open data on mobility options in major cities, to better inform users of the mobility services, researchers understanding the city and businesses creating value, insights, and tools from such freely given, valuable datasets.

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